Bill Silliker, Jr.

The Camera Hunter

BOBCAT

     I wanted this picture very much. I'd never even seen a bobcat in the wild.   But the camera meter said NO when I aimed a 400mm telephoto lens through the dusty windshield, and that was with the camera at 1/60 second shutter speed.   You can't hope to get a clear shot hand-holding a heavy lens at that slow a shutter speed, and my tripod lay folded up in the back seat.   The trilogy of better wildlife photography held the key to bringing home an image of this bobcat: know your equipment, know yourself and know your species.   This one had everything to do with knowing your equipment. 

     Consistent success at camera hunting requires a total familiarity with one's gear.   Simply knowing how to use your equipment - which buttons to push, what the meter says - is a good place to start, but it's not enough to meet the challenges of photographing most Maine wildlife.   You must train yourself to use your equipment as a reflex action.   To do that, you just have to pay some dues. 

     The first step?   Find and read your entire camera manual.   Then practice. Read photography magazines and books.   And practice some more.   Maybe take a photography course.   And practice some more.   Then read your camera manual again.   You'll be surprised at how much they added to it.    

     Then, to know exactly what your equipment can and cannot do, shoot a lot of film.   Hey, it's fun. Besides, your photo processor will love you.   Only don't just keep the winners.   Study all your results: learn what doesn't work as well.   And figure out why before you toss the rejects. 

     It will help if you use the same film all of the time, at least until you learn what that film can and cannot do.   Since film choice is just that, your choice depending on your purpose,  let's just say that I was shooting 100 ASA speed Fujichrome slide film when the big kitty came along.

     And now, trust that the process described below took far less time than it's going to take for you to read about it.   That's the whole point: if you have to stop to figure it out, you'll miss the shot. 

     How long do you think the bobcat stared at me as the sun set at the Baring Division of the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge?   I never checked my watch.   But I can tell you that, as it so often does, the whole day's camera hunting came down to a matter of mere seconds.   How many bobcats have you had a look at in the Maine woods?   Did they hang around to pose? 

     The first thing that I had to do was to figure out how to hold the camera as steady as possible.   The answer: open the car door a bit to get the angle for the shot and rest the camera on the open window.   Shooting through the windshield was definitely out: the curvature of the glass made for too poor an optical quality, to say nothing of the dirt.   While you can "shoot through" some things that are within the minimum focusing range of a telephoto lens - a blade of grass or even a tree stem so close to the lens that it doesn't show - curved glass distorts an image badly.   And dirty curved glass is even worse. 

     I eased the door open as quickly and as smoothly as possible, without any abrupt motions.   The bobcat just stared at me.   Oh, it saw the door move all right, but I think it was curious about the big camera rig in my hands. 

     As I slid out behind the door and crouched, I cranked the shutter speed up to 1/125 second and rested the barrel of the heavy telephoto lens on the open window of the car door.   Of course the camera meter still said NO.   But it was pushing the envelope to hold 10 pounds of camera and lens steady leaning it on a wobbly car door at that shutter speed.   A slower speed would surely have wasted this rare opportunity.   How did I know that?   I'd tried it before.   

     I didn't even consider setting up the tripod: the bobcat would never have stayed around for that.   The tripod was in the back seat because I had thought I was done for the day since the light was definitely too low for my target species, black bears out after the first grass at green-up.

     I ignored the meter and composed and focused.   I squeezed the electronic shutter release that I always keep on my camera for just such situations, because it permits me to shoot without touching and thus shaking the camera.   Its use is essential in bringing home such a shot. 

     The big kitty ran at the first shutter click.   My second shot shows only its east end headed west; trees hide its head.   But you only need one.   And so how did I get this image if the camera meter said NO?    The meter in my camera - and in yours too - is calibrated to guide exposures for  "average" scenes, based on their reflectance of light, or what is called 18 percent gray.   Thinking of 18 percent gray as reflecting an amount of light halfway between the amount of light reflected by an all white object and the amount of light reflected by an all black object is a good way to visualize the concept. 

     The area I metered for this shot had a lot of typical Maine woods in it.   And typical Maine woods isn't an average scene.   Because I've spent some time metering such trees, I knew that they could reflect from one to two F stops less light than an average scene.   I also knew that an F-stop equals a shutter speed.   And so I guessed that I had enough light to properly expose an "average" bobcat at 1/125 second because the darker background was fooling the meter. 

     Just to be sure I ran to the spot after the bobcat left and metered off of a photographer's gray card that I carry for a guide.   And the camera's meter said YES!   And if my after-the-fact metering had said that there wasn't enough light?   I was prepared to have my film "pushed", or specially processed, to match the exposure setting that I had used.   But that's a subject for another column.   It's all part of knowing your equipment, including your film, and what it can do.   No matter what the camera meter says!

Bill Silliker, Jr. teaches wildlife & nature photography for L.L. Bean's Outdoor Discovery Schools and has done the photography for 5 books, several of which he also wrote. He is editor of the website www.wildlifewatcher.com as well as for his own website at www.camerahunter.com

© Copyright 2000 Bill Silliker, Jr. all rights reserved.